The European Model of Immunology recently accepted a study from the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare that showed how long COVID antibodies remained in an infected person's body well after he or she recovered from the disease.
The study, which was accepted by the EMI on September 24, analyzed data from 1,292 patients eight months after being infected with COVID, testing for the presence of antibodies.
Results of the study showed that up to 96% still showed the neutralizing antibodies for COVID and 66% had the the nucleoprotein Immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibody, the Christian Headlines reported. The IgG antibody is the one that helps the immune system remember how to fight an infection it previously encountered, such as COVID.
For the study, scientists in Finland randomly took 367 subjects from the original study group who remained unvaccinated for a year after their COVID infection. Among them, 89% of subjects still demonstrated the presence of neutralizing antibodies, while 36% showed the IgG antibody. Moreover, patients who had severe COVID but recovered showed higher antibody levels, up to two to seven times as many antibodies than their counterparts who had only mild infections, 13 months after they contracted COVID.
Despite providing long-term protection against the original COVID strain, however, the neutralizing antibodies' effectiveness in fighting the Alpha, Beta, and Delta variants of COVID decreased over time. But scientists noted that these neutralizing antibodies "were only slightly reduced" in the Alpha variant and "considerably declined" in the Beta variant.
Additionally, more than 80% of subjects who recovered from severe COVID still showed neutralizing antibodies against the Delta variant 12 months after infection.
According to CBN News, some doctors are lamenting how the medical community has been quick to dismiss the importance of natural immunity obtained from a previous COVID infection. Johns Hopkins School of Public Health professor Dr. Marty Makary said in late June, "It's one of the biggest failures of our medical establishment to dismiss natural immunity. It works. It's durable. You may not need the vaccine and it's probably long-lasting. It's probably life-long."
Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb agrees as well, saying in September that, "I think we need to recognize that people who have immunity that's acquired through infection, that immunity is durable, and it appears it is quite robust. I think the question from a clinical standpoint is how long it's going to last."
Now, more and more studies are answering Gottlieb's question as to how long natural immunity from a previous COVID infection will last. In Israel, a study published in August showed how natural immunity from previous COVID infection demonstrated longer lasting protection against the Delta strain of COVID versus two doses of the Pfizer shot.
The study also showed that those who were fully vaccinated from COVID were six times more likely to experience a breakthrough infection from the Delta variant compared to unvaccinated people who were previously infected with COVID.
